Is Brexit the end of the game for the Conservative rule-breakers? | Andy Beckett

For years, the Tories have used their power to game the system. But that won’t wash with the EU

In politics, as in the rest of life, rules are often about power. Who sets them, who obeys them and who breaks them – and whether they get away with it – tells us a lot about where power lies. In Britain, with our unwritten and patched-together constitution, the rules of politics can be vague and poorly understood by voters, the media, and even some politicians. What is permitted – and what is not – forms a kind of constant, shifting fog, inside which crucial battles are fought.

“Politics is sometimes … about finding out how to change the rules of the game,” wrote the Anglo-American political philosopher Raymond Geuss in 2008. The Conservatives are often good at this exercise. Despite rarely being very popular, competent or full of ideas, they’ve managed to stay in office for the last 10 years through a variety of unconventional manoeuvres: forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats; changing the electoral cycle with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act; avoiding a hostile House of Commons by illegally proroguing parliament; and, most important of all, by calling a rare and risky referendum on EU membership, losing it, and then siding with the winners.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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